2 Answers
2

The problem seems to be related to this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/785701, and the problem seems to be Inkscape trying to access files that are currently unavailable to it (files that may be on network shares or external disks that are currently umounted or disconnected).

Mark Roth's answer on that launchpad page had a good suggestion to run "strace inkscape" from the terminal in order to see what happens when Inkscape freezes. You may find that, rather than restarting the system, you can instead mount the disk with the file Inkscape is having trouble stat-ing then try starting up Inkscape again.

I haven't had a chance to play with Inkscape since I posted this. I went back to Fireworks on my VM. I'm pretty sure I was accessing files on my hard drive so I don't think that bug was the issue. Nevertheless, I appreciate the response and have selected this. I'll try running strace inkscape if it happens to me again.
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klenwellMay 21 '12 at 1:07